just letting you know that I have won the speeding ticket case. Walking and driving a happy man!

 

Congrats! Tell us what worked? Was it the formula, pictures, cop not showing up? Inquiring minds and us "" need to know!

 

On a similar issue, they had one of those speed indicator signs up one day near our house and the hybrid made the speed reading go all over the place but much higher than I was going. The next time I went by it was correct. Wonder if electric mode messes up the readings. Anyone know (and if it is in another thread I am sorry.) Laurie

 

C'mon Steinbok...I read this entire thread and the only details we get is that you won?..that's kind of anti-climatic. I'm very glad you won since the odds of winning are somewhat slim, but how'd you do it?

 

Yeah, seriously. I plowed through this whole thread. What happened to result in you beating the ticket?

And while we're wrapping up loose ends, whoever mentioned having the secret to beating the photo machines, please offer that up, too.

 

Yeah I just went through the whole thread too, hehe.

Reminds me of my most recent ticket experience. This was before the much-better TCH, but I was on my way to work one day and just cruising along with traffic, started cutting to the right to get to where I could exit, and suddenly there's a car pulling me over.

He tells me I was speeding, and he's giving me a warning for passing on the right, plus he informed me rather displeased-sounding, I didn't "have the right amount of air in my tire". My thought at that was wtf?? "The right amount of air"?? My pressure may have been a little low, I had a slow leak at the time, but "your tire pressure's low" sounds a lot more sensible than "don't have the right amount of air".

So between the stupid "amount of air" thing and the fact the "passing on the right" was both not illegal (on an interstate highway) and was NOT the law he referenced in the ticket, I wasn't interested in paying.

Anyway I appealed, got a court date to show up in a town fairly out of my way. I'd actually just signed up for my company's "legal plan" (like a medical plan), so I figured I'd try that out. Called a couple of places, found one lawyer who listened, said they didn't actually have anybody who could do it because they had so many closings going on at the time, but that one basic thing I needed to mention was that the ticket got entered as being in a different town, and they sent me to the wrong courthouse for where I actually got stopped.

Here the hearing isn't before a judge (that may be a subsequent level??), it's just you and some court clerk or something, and a state trooper acting on behalf of the police. I showed up, waited with all these other people for my chance, went in... the trooper started reading off the "offense", and kinda went... "you're here because you got stopped in.... uhh... well ok... so anyway, you were pulled over in... [town name]...?? and... hm." *stops while he looks over the ticket some more* "Okay you know, I've never seen this many errors or a single citation before." (The guy who stopped me also didn't put down how he measured the speed.) There I was with all my little printouts of the laws for the passing on the right thing, all of that, and I never even got to defend myself! The woman for the court basically said "okay, well, I guess we'll just go ahead and say you're not responsible..."

It was amusing but I'd kinda been looking forward to pointing out the mistakes myself, lol.


On the issue of police obeying traffic laws, I'm all over that too. I remember one night driving along the interstate, and I was in the left lane passing like 3 cars in a row. This car kind of pulls up behind me, and I'm thinking to myself "I'm not going to go any faster just so you can get past me sooner, buddy." Then I see a little flash, figure the guy's flipping his high-beams at me. Another flash and I notice it's actually a quick flash of the in-grill blue lights. I get past the last car, shift right a lane, and then the police car just cruises past. I'm pretty sure those lights aren't actually there to get people to move out of the way when the police are just driving normally.

 

Talking about speeding tickets, what's going on in "People's Republic of Virginia"? I drove to Virginia Beach last weekend and I've never seen so many traumatized drivers in my whole life, afraid of driving 2 miles over speed limit even if their life depended on it. I counted 7 police cars just on Chesapeake Bay Bridge alone, putting most of police and communist states to shame and I hear $3500 penalty for speeding tickets? Is life in prison for speeders far away? LOL.

 

There are a lot of state police everywhere in VA...When I go up to MD from TN I can't tell you how many state police I see on 81. I run into the same thing going through Alabama.

Back on topic...like others have said, what did you do to win the case?

 

Indeed. The weekend before too. The CBB has a TON of cops on it. And yes, 81 does as well. They love those unmarked gray cars too. And of course they flat out say radar detectors are illegal.

 

I prepared a Power Point presentation showing a formula and explaining that what the cop said was (IS) physically impossible. I prepared road condition report, acceleration graph under different loads. I prepared a spreadsheet, calculating instantly my maximum possible speed based on the distance traveled. I prepared vehicle data sheets from Toyota. I prepared about 60 questions for the cop. HE would have to admit that the gun was mis-calibrated. I had pictures taken at a repair shop that fixes police cars, showing a radar gun pointed at a wall, showing the wall’s speed at 30 km/h…..

Took me about 30 hours to get everything ready.

I won because the cop did not show up.